That’s actually not too surprising. The order I had problems with, that I had spent a couple of months trying and failing to get a hold of them before this fiasco, was one that should have come in back in March. I got no notification that the models had arrived (despite them showing up other places), so I finally spent a week or two trying to get a hold of them about it. They informed me that they had in fact arrived, but that their credit card machine was out of commission. Could I wait (what I thought would be a few days or a week) to get that sorted? Sure, I happily waited.
After more than a month, I started to get rather forward with my communications attempts, and they had stopped responding.
Talking to a few other people who’d been having problems as well, I was starting to get the feeling something was not as it should be…hence this whole thing happening was not as big a surprise as it might otherwise have been.
I had posted this elsewhere, but it seems appropriate I post it here also.
It seems I have done around $700 with CMT. Paid for a Rivarossi Big Boy in October 2011, got the run around for months that it was faulty. In the meantime I added more goods. 8 weeks ago I requested they refund all of my money as nothing had been sent to me and they never respond to emails. Tom then was so quick to email me to reassure me all was okay, they had the loco back and were sending it to the painter to weather. So I agreed to wait, guess what, to this day I have no goods and I can not get a reply to even one of my emails. Today I checked their website to find the lovely message about their inventory. It seems to me that this has been an outcome they were fully aware of. Lesson learnt, I will never ever again buy online from small operators. I would sooner pay through the nose and buy from the likes of Horizon or Walthers. Being in Australia makes it a bit difficult for me to pursue this one.
A further update, at 9.00am Thursday 23rd I called CMT, got to speak to Tom. He told me that the whole of CMT has been sold and he is not allowed to speak about anything to do with it, he can’t answer emails and we all need to deal with the new owners. I personally don’t swallow that at all. An email from the new “owner” tells me if they have my goods in the inventory then I will be contacted so they can be shipped to me. If they don’t have them well try to get a refund off CMT. So I will be waiting to see what happens. The only outcome might be if you paid by credit card and got no goods then maybe the bank will accept a claim for a full refund of your money. That is my last resort here in Australia, but I don’t know about other countries.
My complaint and maybe others are in the same boat. I don’t give a damn about CMT profitability and what percentage in the dollar they got for their inventory, in my situation they sold my goods that I had already paid for as part of th
I don’t have a dog in this fight myself, but I have watched it discussed by others and made the occasional comment that I thought might be helpful. There certainly are plenty of loose ends.
The following info is secondhand to me, originally was generated from discussion on CanModelTrains Yahoo group, from what I understand, and reposted on a forum I read regularly. It does not assume criminal conduct, but notes that enough questions have been raised that those who feel they may have been victims of a crime may wish to contact the following investigator. I have only a partial email address – christopher.dp@ – but suspect the remainder is whatever email address the Durham RPS uses and you may be able to scare that up with a little internet research. Good luck.
EDIT: Thanks to M_Robinson, the full email address is christopher.dp@drps.ca to reach the inspector looking into this affair.
Chris Plue (PC #667)- D Platoon Durham Regional Police Service Assigned to 15 Division - North Durham Community Police Office 905-579-1520 (Main Line) I will be working dayshift again on October 3rd and can be reached should you need to speak to me over the phone.
The investigator that will be taking care of this matter is assigned to our Major Crime Branch - Fraud Unit. Although Peel Regional Police have been advised of this, our service will be providing carriage of this investigation throughout its preliminary phases. As of now, we are simply seeking individuals to come forward who feel that they may have become victim of a crime. CMT has not been contacted as of yet, and we are are not alluding to the fact that a criminal offense(s) has occurred, but the onus will be on CMT to provide information which would lead investigators to believe that there was no ‘intent’ to defraud cus
Anyone know if Walthers carries True Line Trains? I’ve tried the (unimpressive) Walthers search engine for all spellings but just get the message that no results can be found. My LHS requires a Walthers # to order. TIA.
Actually I did try that, both earlier and just now. It works from my home PC, but from my iPhone I get the “Sorry, We could not find what you were looking for” message.
Probably better that way, keeps me from making impulsive rolling stock purchases from my phone.